查看文章

Rising sea levels and the increasing intensity of storm surges and tropical cyclones due to climate change and the resulting dynamic shifts in shoreline positions have dramatically increased the exposure risk and vulnerability of local communities inhabiting the ecologically sensitive deltaic tracts of the Sunderbans in India. The impacts arising from such hazard events on this fragile ecosystem need to be gauged to ameliorate the lives and livelihoods of these residents. This article examines the spatial distribution of vulnerability to coastal hazards within the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) in India. For this, we have utilized several structural and process variables, which were integrated to construct a coastal vulnerability index (CVI), using the square root equation. The coastlines of the islands located within the SBR were overlain by 543 grids, each of 2 × 2 km dimension, to assign the risk rank for …